How to avoid big tech companies (and alternatives to try)

The digital technology that runs so much of our lives traces back to 1947 and the invention of the transistor (a semiconductor device that can amplify or switch electronic signals), which was followed by the integrated circuit in the 1950s and then the microprocessor in the early 1970s.

Did Walter Brattain, John Bardeen, and William Shockley (who shared the Nobel Prize in Physics for inventing the transistor) ever guess how far and how fast their tech would carry us? It seems unlikely. Could anyone at the time have predicted that we would come to live in a digital world controlled by just a handful of companies? Definitely not.

The problem with big tech (Google, Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, etc.)

Too many of the technologies we use daily have become threats to both the environment and society. This is in large part because just a small number of firms underpin most of what people do online. Search, email, cloud storage, mapping, video, messaging, app distribution, and the advertising systems that fund most of the ‘free’ web are dominated by Alphabet (Google), Amazon, Apple, Meta (Facebook), and Microsoft – big tech or ‘big other’.

From child labour to the mental health crisis to the censorship of free speech, big tech companies have proven all too ready to abet governments, hoover up scarce resources, and invade people’s privacy for their own gain. Each of the five companies discussed here can be linked to deaths around the world – whether through the material support of ongoing wars, turning a blind eye to documented human rights abuses, or designing environments linked to suicides.

These companies often have terrible reputations as employers because of poor working conditions or refusing them the right to unionise or ignoring legitimate employee concerns over issues like military contracts. They have illegally conspired to stop employees negotiating higher pay. They treat users like data points, not humans – collecting varying degrees of information about us that is sold or otherwise monetised.

Tax avoidance is well-documented and standard practice for these companies. They often create subsidiaries in countries like Ireland, Luxembourg, Bermuda, and the British Virgin Islands, using complex mechanisms and accounting techniques to cut the taxes they pay around the world. They lobby hard to create the regulatory conditions that will allow them to thrive financially and – even where a tax liability is undisputed – use their size to negotiate the amount they will actually pay.

Some people may feel this is just how big companies behave. But when a handful of firms control the infrastructure that most of the world depends on, the harm they can cause is global and instantaneous, while the ability to check it is local, slow, and fragmented. Even where harm is clear and documented, most users can’t simply leave because the infrastructure is too embedded in personal, professional, and civic life to opt out of. Dark patterns and digital sludge also heighten the friction involved in leaving or cancelling subscriptions.

This leads to a degree of apathy and a feeling that these firms are now genuinely too central to modern life to simply be ignored or boycotted by individuals, and that correction will have to come from regulation. But if these companies will never really change, the change must come from us!

A problem of concentration

The right digital tools can help us work faster and centralise our activities in a way that promotes collaboration. We can work from anywhere, on any device, without having to take a filing cabinet of paperwork with us. The argument against big tech isn’t an argument against using digital technology, merely against their practice of privatising the gains while socialising the costs. In a genuinely competitive market, bad actors lose customers to better ones. In a market this concentrated, users are often choosing between a small number of firms that all behave similarly or not choosing at all. Luckily, there are movements across the world to help people move away from these gatekept, algorithm-driven platforms and towards more independent, transparent, and privacy-focused alternatives.

Alternatives to big tech products and services

Below we list just a few reasons to consider leaving these companies. This is not meant to be a comprehensive or journalistic ‘exposé’, merely a starting point for your own research if you want to know more.

Reasons to stop using Alphabet (Google)

Many people only think of Google as a search engine, but the majority of its revenue comes from selling ads – with the core business model built on having the most detailed possible profile of each user across search, email, location, YouTube, and the wider web. Two separate landmark US antitrust cases found that Google had unlawfully monopolised the markets for general search services and general search text ads (paying billions annually to lock in default status on virtually every phone and browser) and that it maintains a monopoly in the advertising technology market by unlawfully tying its products together to control the tools on both sides of most online ad transactions (buyer and seller) as well as the exchange that matches them.

A 2022 report by the Irish Council for Civil Liberties found that Google’s ‘real-time bidding’ ad system (the auction that decides which ads you see, which runs billions of times a day) broadcasts people’s browsing activity and location to thousands of third-party companies in the process, something ICCL called the “biggest data breach ever recorded”. A 2025 complaint filed with the US FTC by EPIC and ICCL cited internal Google communications showing senior executives, including CEO Sundar Pichai, had known about the system’s lack of security for at least a decade.

Google has supplied AI systems to military and government clients and has followed OpenAI and xAI in allowing its Gemini AI models to be used inside the US military. Like other big tech companies, its data centres consume large and growing amounts of electricity and water, although it is believed to have by far the worst footprint. It’s now pushing AI as the main interface for search, which it sees as primarily being about shopping, developing agentic experiences that keep users inside its interface from search to purchase. Where once the company’s lofty goal was to “organize the world’s information”, for some time now it has been focused on preferring its own services to the detriment of the billions of small, ordinary sites that make up most of the web. AI search is the latest, most visible, and most pointless incarnation of that practice.

Alternatives to Google

• Search: DuckDuckGo, Startpage, Kagi, Ecosia (see our article about searching without Google)
• Email: Proton, Tuta
• Maps: OpenStreetMap, Organic Maps
• Browser: Firefox, Brave, Vivaldi
• Cloud storage: Proton, Nextcloud, ownCloud
• Video: PeerTube, NewPipe
• Docs/office: LibreOffice, Only Office, Open Office, Proton

Reasons to stop using Amazon

Amazon’s dominance over online retail dwarfs even its closest rival, Walmart, reinforced by an unmatched logistics infrastructure and powerful algorithmic preferencing. But it’s not just a retailer. Amazon’s tentacles now reach into cloud computing, advertising, subscriptions, physical stores, logistics and freight, smart home devices, Alexa and Echo hardware, healthcare, streaming and production, media and publishing, financial services, satellite internet, robotics and automation, grocery delivery, and AI… a dizzying number of ways to float wealth up to its main shareholder, Jeff Bezos.

A series of antitrust complaints, lawsuits, and reports illustrate how Amazon likes to do business (this is a non-exhaustive list):

• A 10-year internal algorithm, nicknamed Project Nessie, identified products where rival retailers reliably price-matched Amazon, deliberately raised prices on those items, and then held them there once competitors followed suit. This earned Amazon over $1 billion in extra profit.
• A ‘Featured Offer Disqualification’ algorithm punishes any seller offering a lower price on a competing site (like Walmart, Target, or just their own website) by stripping them of the default ‘Add to Basket’ button that drives the majority of marketplace sales, effectively ending their visibility on the platform.
• Amazon ties eligibility for the Prime badge (critical for sales) to using its own logistics service, Fulfilment by Amazon (FBA), which gives it a cut of nearly every stage of a seller’s operation (referral fees, fulfilment fees, advertising fees). Reporting put total fees taken from US third-party sellers at roughly $140 billion in 2023 alone, described by one estimate as approaching 45% of the value of an average third-party sale.
• KDP Select, the programme that gives access to Kindle Unlimited (a major driver of ebook readership) and better promotional tools, requires authors to not sell the ebook anywhere else for 90-day rolling periods. As Kindle Unlimited access is where much of the reader traffic and revenue now sit for many independent authors, this creates strong commercial pressure toward exclusivity even though it isn’t a blanket contractual requirement.
• AWS provides cloud infrastructure to the Israeli government and military under the Project Nimbus contract, alongside Google.
• Amazon’s Ring doorbell division has built what critics describe as a de facto surveillance network, partnering with thousands of US police departments. Senator Ed Markey’s investigation found Ring shared footage with law enforcement without a warrant or the owner’s consent on multiple occasions, and Ring has long declined to rule out adding facial recognition to its cameras.

Amazon’s record as an employer is terrible. A 2024 Oxfam America report based on warehouse worker surveys found most respondents felt pressured to work at unsafe speed, with over half saying the pace made it difficult to use the bathroom. Amazon is accused of illegally firing workers who raised safety concerns or tried to organise. In the US, a 2026 Government Accountability Office report found the number of Amazon employees enrolled in SNAP (food stamps) and Medicaid has nearly tripled since 2020. In the same period, Amazon spent $200 billion on AI infrastructure, and Jeff Bezos’s personal wealth roughly doubled.

Alternatives to Amazon

• Online retail: local and independent retailers, national marketplaces, platforms for handmade/small-business goods
• Cloud hosting: OVHcloud, Hetzner, Scaleway, Infomaniak, or self-hosting
• Smart speakers/voice assistants: Home Assistant

Reasons to stop using Apple

Apple’s ‘walled garden’ design – where one company controls the hardware, operating system, app store, and (until regulatory pressure forced change) the default browser engine – makes it structurally difficult for users to leave the ecosystem or install software that Apple hasn’t approved and allowed it to take a 30% cut of most App Store transactions for years.

Apple’s hardware depends on cobalt and other minerals that Amnesty International’s supply-chain investigations have linked to child labour, unsafe conditions, and other human rights violations in Democratic Republic of Congo mines. While they have made strides to reduce hazardous substances in their hardware, they are vocal in their opposition to ‘right to repair’ legislation. In 2020, French authorities fined Apple €25 million for failing to disclose that software updates were deliberately slowing down older iPhones.

As revealed in the US DOJ’s case against Google, Apple receives up to $20 billion a year from Google to remain the default search engine on iPhones. Despite marketing itself as privacy-focused, Apple is happy to tie itself to a company whose data practices it otherwise distances itself from if money is involved.

Alternatives to Apple

• Phone hardware: Fairphone
• Operating systems (for Android hardware): GrapheneOS, /e/OS (de-Googled Android forks)
• App distribution (Android): F-Droid
• Laptop/desktop: System76, Framework, Tuxedo
• Computer operating systems: Ubuntu, Fedora, Pop!_OS

Reasons to stop using Meta (Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp)

Just like Google, Meta is an ad company. It builds detailed profiles of users so it can sell advertisers precise targeting and get higher ad prices. That means the business is structured to keep people scrolling and collect as much behavioural data as it can. It even builds profiles on people who’ve never had an account; for example, when a user uploads their phone contacts or syncs their address book, everyone in that address book (including non-users) gets pulled in. The Meta Pixel, embedded on millions of websites across the internet, tracks browsing behaviour regardless of whether the visitor has a Meta account. Instagram, Threads, and Facebook’s feeds are built with no natural stopping point, so there is no chance to pause and decide whether to keep going. This is coupled with the same psychological mechanism that makes slot machines addictive – because content arrives unpredictably, the user keeps scrolling in the hope that the next post is the good one, rather than ever feeling satisfied and stopping.

Internal Meta research, disclosed to the US Congress and SEC in 2021 by whistleblower Frances Haugen, found the company’s own studies showed Instagram worsened body-image issues for a meaningful share of teenage users. This was research that Meta’s leadership had reviewed and, according to reporting based on the same documents, chose not to act on in ways that would meaningfully affect engagement. Meta’s own researchers repeatedly warned leadership that adults were exploiting Instagram for grooming, data harvesting, and sextortion. But fixes (that would have prevented 5.4 million unwanted direct messages to children daily) weren’t implemented because they would hurt engagement and user growth. A later report by former Facebook engineering director Arturo Béjar and university researchers tested 47 of Instagram’s teen safety features and found nearly two-thirds were either no longer available or trivially easy to circumvent.

A UN Human Rights Council fact-finding mission concluded that Facebook played a determining role in the spread of hate speech ahead of the 2017 Rohingya genocide in Myanmar. The Cambridge Analytica scandal, investigated by both the UK’s Information Commissioner’s Office and the US FTC (which fined Meta $5 billion in 2019), saw up to 87 million users’ data harvested without consent for political micro-targeting. Meta’s algorithms have been repeatedly linked to the spread of political disinformation, including during the 2016 US election and the lead-up to January 6th. Its own research has tied its algorithms to the amplification of divisive and extreme content, since outrage reliably drives more engagement.

Meta’s Ray-Ban smart glasses have earned the nickname ‘pervert glasses’ thanks to their core feature of hands-free, near-invisible recording. A BBC investigation found dozens of male influencers across TikTok and Instagram were using pervert glasses to secretly film women without consent – the footage of one victim (phone number included), which was filmed without her knowledge, hit 1.3 million views on TikTok and triggered a flood of harassment. Wired also reported similar secret recording and posting behaviour by various aspiring influencers. Swedish reporters found that video captured by the glasses – including bathroom visits, intimate moments, and even bank card details – was sent to Nairobi, where subcontractors had to watch and label it to help train the AI. Neither party was ever asked for consent, and Kenya’s data regulator has opened a formal investigation. Meta is facing separate legal action in the US and a probe in the UK over the same practice. This is a familiar pattern in the AI industry: the often distressing, low-paid work of making the technology function lands on workers in the Global South while tech companies keep the product and the profits.

Alternatives to Meta

• Messaging/group chat: Signal, Element
• Social networking: Friendica, Mastodon
• Video/photo sharing: PeerTube, Pixelfed

Reasons to stop using Microsoft

Microsoft’s dominance of enterprise and government computing (Windows, Office 365) creates deep vendor lock-in across public institutions worldwide, making it difficult for governments to switch even when they have sovereignty or cost concerns. For the longest time, it has been standard practice for Microsoft products (Windows and Office) to come bundled with new computers whether you want them or not. As computer manufacturers are charged a licence fee by Microsoft, it’s safe to assume that this is reflected in an increase in the cost of your computer (the “Windows tax”), and you can’t ask for a refund. This practice means that Windows has become extraordinarily widespread as an operating system, despite much criticism of its bloat, poor usability and security, and collection of usage data. This is only compounded by the integration of AI features that are hard to remove but also seen as poor quality and intrusive.

Reporting by the Guardian, +972 Magazine, Israeli outlet Local Call, and the Associated Press found Microsoft’s Azure cloud platform had been used by Israeli military intelligence (Unit 8200) since 2022 to store and analyse Palestinians’ phone calls, reportedly informing military operations in Gaza and the West Bank. Employees who protested the contracts through the No Azure for Apartheid campaign were fired and, in some cases, arrested after occupying company premises. Microsoft disabled some services for one specific military unit in September 2025, although a fired organiser said the large majority of its Israeli military contracts remained intact. Back in the US, the company has been “proud to support” the work of racial-profiling agency ICE and provides the agency with high-security cloud storage.

Microsoft’s acquisition of LinkedIn in 2016 gave it access to one of the largest reserves of professional and personal data. It also combined LinkedIn’s professional network with Microsoft’s existing enterprise software stack (Office, Teams, Dynamics, Azure), letting Microsoft cross-sell and integrate LinkedIn data into recruiting, sales, and workplace tools, deepening lock-in for businesses already dependent on its ecosystem. Regulators in the EU and elsewhere cleared the deal with only minor conditions (largely around interoperability with rival services), which critics point to as an example of merger review consistently underweighting data concentration and ecosystem lock-in as competitive harms (they instead focus on product-market overlap). Microsoft now has unprecedented visibility over who works where, for whom, with what skills, and how organisations are structured, feeding into its advertising, AI training, and enterprise software businesses without having to build or license that data independently. Meanwhile, LinkedIn’s usefulness to individuals declined as the platform’s algorithm rewarded performative content over substance (engagement bait, humblebrags, and faux authenticity) – a problem only magnified by the use of generative AI.

Alternatives to Microsoft

• Operating system: Ubuntu, Fedora, Pop!_OS
• Office software: LibreOffice, OnlyOffice
• Cloud storage/collaboration: Proton, Nextcloud, ownCloud
• Email: Proton, Tuta
• Cloud hosting: OVHcloud, Hetzner, Scaleway, Infomaniak
• Professional networking: Sectoral communities (often run via Slack or Discord) or niche sites, real-life networking (e.g., via Eventbrite, Meetup, local enterprise boards, or business chambers)

Reasons to stop using ByteDance (TikTok)

TikTok’s recommendation algorithm is built to maximise watch time, using design techniques linked, in research also covering Instagram, to negative effects on adolescent mental health and attention span. As a Chinese-owned company, it operates under laws that can compel data-sharing with the state. That was the core justification behind a 2024 US law requiring ByteDance to divest TikTok’s US operations or face a ban, which the Supreme Court unanimously upheld in January 2025. ByteDance completed a restructuring in 2026, giving US investors an 80% stake, though their stake is still meaningful. India banned TikTok outright in 2020 over data security and sovereignty concerns. Australia’s under-16 social media ban, in force since December 2025 and covering TikTok, Instagram, Snapchat, and YouTube, was an explicit response to the platforms’ effect on the mental health of children.

Alternatives to TikTok

• Short-form video: PeerTube

Market dominators erode our independence

Tech is an obvious example of companies becoming too big and too powerful, but the same mechanism runs through other sectors. Network effects and big data give tech platforms a specific mechanism (user lock-in and behavioural profiling) that older industries like oil, retail, or luxury products don’t have, but the wealth-concentration problem is general to most sectors. Wage suppression, pricing power, market dominance, squeezing out independent companies, and the control of capital itself are all well-documented issues that predate the big tech companies being discussed here.

Meanwhile, the people heading up these businesses accumulate mind-boggling wealth. Oxfam’s global inequality report from January 2026 found that the world’s 12 richest billionaires hold a combined $2.6 trillion, more than the poorest half of humanity combined. It notes that billionaires now own or control more than half the world’s largest media companies and all of the dominant social media platforms, extracting value from users while shaping the very information environment those same users depend on.

Oxfam also estimates that billionaires are around 4,000 times more likely to hold public office than an average citizen and that the 100 wealthiest US families alone accounted for a sixth of all campaign contributions in the last presidential election. The link between economic power and political power is a serious issue in countries all over the world, at all income levels, and on all continents. As the report says, “Elites can use their power to appropriate public policies, laws, and contracts of regulatory frameworks essential for fighting inequality, poverty and exclusion. They have the power to ‘capture’ or ‘hijack’ public policies that are important for reducing economic inequality and unequal opportunities.”

Concentrated corporate wealth results in the daily transfer of control over our own choices to people who then make sure we never get that control back. That isn’t philosophical abstraction; it’s the loss of individual autonomy. Data extraction, algorithmic pricing, lock-in, and wage pressure are bad enough. But the harm compounds instead of being corrected when the same concentration of wealth captures the laws and regulators meant to keep it in check. The result is that we lose our independence twice over: once directly, in our daily interactions with these companies, and once structurally, in the loss of a fair say over the rules that govern them.